Actress Susan Sarandon frustrated the nuns at her Catholic school when she was a child by questioning their religious teachings.

The star, who played a nun in the film Dead Man Walking, insists she was "a very quiet kid", who was keen to please until she started taking issue with what she was being taught.

In a new Tv interview with Oprah Winfrey, which will air in America on Sunday (09Jun13), Sarandon says, "Certain things just didn't make sense to me and when I questioned, there was a problem.

"I remember them telling me that you couldn't be married unless you were married in the Catholic Church. And I asked how were Joseph and Mary married since Jesus didn't make it up 'til later. And I had to go stand in the hallway and that's when the trouble began - when I was in, like, third grade.

"I was told that I had an overabundance of original sin, but I was not trying to be a wise a**. I just didn't understand why they would put babies in limbo just because they weren't baptised... or why would (they) say every other religion was bad.

"It just didn't make sense to me but I was going over during my lunch hour and making visits to church to, you know, pray to be a good person while everyone else was making out in the confessionals.

"This quest for being a good person and being a spiritual person has carried over into my life. I think that all religions at their core have some really magnificent teachings and most of them are very similar. It's the institutionalisation of these religious principles that don't serve me well."